Facts
1 – The 22 interceptions are new
The number of 22 interceptions is mentioned in the order from the Central Criminal Instruction Court (TCIC) sent on Thursday, November 20, 2025, to the lawyers of the nine defendants in the investigation called “Influencer”, launched in 2019, which investigates signs of corruption and influence peddling in investment projects, including a data center in Sines, the first of five planned was inaugurated last April.
As DN reported, these sessions took place in 2020, 2021 and 2022, involving António Costa and three people targeted in the investigation — João Pedro Matos Fernandes, João Galamba and Diogo Lacerda Machado, the latter two defendants — and were submitted by the DCIAP last October, first to the STJ and then to the TCIC for validation.
According to the TCIC order that cites the DCIAP request, “the 22 sessions in question, intercepted between 12/24/2020 and 12/24/2022, were now recovered because, according to a certain understanding, specifically that of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, it was necessary for the President of the Supreme Court of Justice to acknowledge them”.
By saying that “they have now been recovered” indicates that they had not been recovered yet and, therefore, are new. In fact, the DCIAP cited in the court order highlighted that these sessions had not previously been “identified” and submitted to the STJ, as required by law when a head of Government is involved, “for reasons that we have not discovered”.
In conclusion, the MP’s promotion leaves no doubt. It was the MP who came to ask in October 2025 that these 22 wiretaps be sent now (as they had not been sent before) to the STJ.
2 – DCIAP’s arguments to justify this delay: “Reasons that we did not discover” and “various technical reasons”
The justification for the DCIAP has, until now, had two moments:
– In the TCIC order, when citing the request it made for the validation of the sessions: “The analysis of the evidentiary collection in progress in the present case, namely the interceptions of communications that targeted João Galamba, Diogo Lacerda Machado and João Pedro Matos Fernandes, resulted in the identification of a set of sessions in which António Costa, Prime Minister of the XXII and XXII Constitutional Governments, interacted with those targets through voice calls and of SMS. (…) We found that all of these sessions are included in the Communications Interception Reports contained in the records, although, for reasons that we did not discover, some of them were not identified for the purposes of article 11, no. 2, b) of the CPP”, argue the MP prosecutors.
– In the DCIAP statement released this Friday, the 21st: “During a new analysis of all the wiretaps carried out, 7 others were identified (of which, 6 are just contact attempts) in which Prime Minister António Costa was also involved, a fact that, for various technical reasons, had not been initially detected”.
3 – António Costa is not a defendant nor was he under wiretapping
“António Costa was never directly subject to telephone tapping or surveillance (neither when he was prime minister, nor when he was no longer prime minister)”, guarantees the DCIAP in its statement.
The former prime minister was targeted, in November 2023, in a statement from the Attorney General’s Office (PGR) about the searches and arrests carried out (including the office of his chief of staff, Vítor Escária) in which he reported that “during the course of the investigations, it emerged, moreover, knowledge of the invocation by suspects of the name and authority of the prime minister and his intervention” and that “such references” would be “autonomously analyzed within the scope of the investigation instituted in the Supreme Court of Justice”. This note led to his resignation and the fall of the Socialist majority Government.
In May 2024, António Costa was heard at the DCIAP, as a “declarant”, following a request he presented.
However, the Express said that the current president of the European Council asked four times, in the last year, to consult the process, which was denied by the Public Prosecutor’s Office on the grounds that it was under judicial secrecy.
4 – Lawyers were notified of the TCIC’s decision on the 22 new wiretaps
All lawyers for defendants Diogo Lacerda Machado, Vítor Escária, Rui Oliveira Neves, João Tiago Silveira, Afonso Salema, João Galamba, Nuno Mascarenhas and the company Start Campus were notified.